As a result of the rapid evolution of communication equipment such as facsimile machines, micro-computers, telephone recording machines, etc., the number of communication receptacles that are now normally required into a dwelling or an office facility have greatly increased during the past years.
In a typical installation, the communication connection for the equipment is provided by attaching to a stud of a hollow wall structure a conventional electrical junction box which serves as a support to a wall plate carrying the communication receptacle that receives the terminal line plug of the equipment. For convenience, the communication outlet is often located close to a power receptacle.
Since, generally, the electrical junction boxes for the communication and the power receptacles are mounted on stud members of the hollow wall structure, the communication and the power wall terminals will be spaced from one another by a minimal distance corresponding to the spacing between two adjacent stud members which typically are set at 16 or 24 inches apart. It would be highly desirable to integrate the communication and the power wall terminals so that the communication and the power cables that come out of the equipment may be grouped into a unitary bundle which is connected to a single location on the wall so as to create, visually speaking, a more pleasant installation.
Although presently available double electrical junction boxes may be employed to house the power receptacle and to support the wall plate carrying the communication receptacle, thus combining the two wall terminals, such an installation is contrary to electrical code regulations which do not allow communication and power conductors in the same conduit or enclosure without a physical barrier between them.
With presently available hardware, locating the power and the communication wall terminals adjacent to one another can only be accomplished by mounting one of the junction boxes on a stud and the other on the wall-board adjacent the stud mounted junction box. For a wall-board mounting, a relatively expensive junction box must be used which employs special clamps allowing to fasten the box to the wall-board. The cost of such an installation is fairly high and for this reason it is not very popular.